Page 164 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

The way he held her.

The way his heart beat in time with hers.

The way he’d made that feel so intimate and safe and still like she was so wanted, though they couldn’t touch. Something in her blood called to him. Something that had been so lonely all these years, as if it was waiting for him.

“Fates, Emmeline, what’s happening here?” He was always so in control. This was the first time she felt like he was openly admitting he wasn’t.

This, though? This kind of honesty? It danced too close to truths she couldn’t acknowledge. To the intimacy she couldn’t allow, under any circumstance, no matter how much she wanted him or how he looked at her like she was the stars themselves.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Panic flared through her. A sensation of everything slipping away.

He must have read it on her face, because he massaged the back of her neck and asked, “Are you okay?”

No, she almost said.

No, because he was not supposed to be able to see her. He was not supposed to be able to glance at her and know the thoughts imprinted on her spirit—the blood-drenched ones and the nightmare stricken, the melodies and the fate laced. He was not supposed to be able to graze the skin of her waist and light up every inch down to her soul.

She had spent eighteen years intentionally remaining unseen, and this man who waltzed in with his reckless winks and heart-shattering arguments had somehow given her a look that said she was made of glass. He’d shattered her, broken her wide open, and those sharp pieces sank their edges into her chest. Lodged him behind her ribs where she knew no matter how desperately she wanted to claw him out, she would forever be known by him. He would forever be tied to her.

In tragedy and forevermore, something written by the stars and cursed by them, as well.

But she was still unable to give him everything. So she whispered, “Yes,” and pretended not to feel the sting in her eyes as she pressed her forehead to his chest.

Roremar sighed against her hair, the sound so raw and vulnerable she knew his next words would shatter her even more. “Before I met you, Emmeline, my life was full, but it was cramped. The suffocating kind of filled that could drown you. But something about being with you flipped a latch. It’s like you expanded all this room in my lungs I didn’t know I had.” He paused, still massaging her neck. “Maybe it’s that contagious magic your father said you’re full of. But something about the hours we spent working on this investigation breathed vitality into me that I haven’t felt in…ever. You’re the stars that ignited the darkness, Huntress. You showed me how to breathe when the air felt too thick and life too heavy.”

She inhaled sharply, lungs pinching further with each of his words. “You’re not stuck in darkness, Roremar, you’ve simply been blinded by it. We all have days where it presses on us.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, she considered stopping there, but while she couldn’t give him everything, she could give him this comfort. “Being with you feels like a leash is wrapped around my chest. It’s a constant pull.”

As if her feet were tugged out from under her and no matter how firmly she dug her heels in, it didn’t matter.

This—them—whatever it was…it was inevitable.

“I’ve tried to run. I keep trying to claw away from that feeling because bad things happen when I let people in—and I’ve never let someone all the way in. But nothing I do seems to be enough to keep you away.”

“Don’t fight it.” It was a plea.

Don’t hide, he’d said from the floor of her dormitory when he’d rescued her.

Don’t run from me, he’d begged in a reading before that.

She thought this third request might make her crumble, each one unknowingly disarming her further these weeks. But she couldn’t stop, no matter how much that admission killed her.

“I know you have a deal with Falliare and you’re going to leave, but for now—while you’re here—don’t fight it.”

Her chest pinched.

She didn’t regret what they’d just done. Fates, she certainly didn’t, nor did she regret anything she’d shared with him so far. But that didn’t mean she got to keep him. If there was one thing she’d learned throughout her life, it was that she didn’t get to keep the things she cherished most. That was simply the path the Fates had written for her.

But perhaps, for now, she didn’t have to be so lonely.

“I’ll try,” she agreed.

“Will you stay here tonight?” he whispered as he dragged a hand down her spine.

She blinked up at him. “Are you sleeping on the chaise?”

He shook his head. “Stay in the bed with me.”

“Okay,” she agreed. And although the way he saw her scared her, for the first time, she didn’t want to run.